The Baseball Diaries April 16
Hello everyone and welcome to my Baseball Diaries. This article is going to recap the previous night’s performance of my team as well as one of my competitors. The goal is to give a bit of insight as to why the players were selected and maybe some roster configuration tactics. No matter how good of a fantasy player someone thinks they are, no one can predict the future. All we can do is use our best judgment and sound strategy to be successful. So in lieu of handing out player picks, I present to you my Baseball Diaries.
Fanduel Team
This team was built on a Rangers mini-stack. I had 1 entry into this big $535 Q and wanted to put, what I thought, was my best option forward. I knew it was chalk heavy, meaning a lot of people were going to mini stack Rangers and also play Ventura, but I thought I could separate in other areas. Namely no one having Puig or Yadier Molina.
Yordano Ventura I had Ventura pretty high on my list last night. It was actually foolish of me to limit myself by choosing Strasburg so much. For obvious reasons the teams that I played Ventura over Strasbum were clearly better.
Prince Fielder Finally big boy hit a home run for Texas. If he hadn’t produced at home against a weak RHP in Beaven last night, then I think I would have faded Fielder until he started producing. Although I still had a list of, literally, 17 1st baseman I would have felt comfortable playing, I rostered Fielder a bunch in hopes of a breakout game.
Daniel Murphy This was a mistake on this team. Sure Murphy scored a decent 3.25 points, but 5 minutes before this locked I noticed I had Neil Walker in this spot and liked Murphy much more so I changed them out for the same price. Walker hit a home run and that swap cost me about 6 points, the equivalent of $1,500 in prize money here in this contest
Yadier Molina I’ve always been a proponent of NOT completely punting your catcher spot. I don’t care what position it is, I like to get points. I paid up for Yadi last night and although the 4.5 points weren’t going to set the world on fire, the only C’s that outscored him was Ianetta and Corporan. Both of those guys probably weren’t rostered much leaving Yadi as a top scorer at C last night. Most guys will say Molina was too much and that they would rather roll a $2200 punt like Zunino out, and I would understand that approach.
Alex Rios This is the pitfall of these mini stacks. First off you need to hope the team you choose to stack scores runs. The Rangers didn’t score enough. Next you need to have the high scoring options from that team on your roster. When guys like Choo and Rios score next to nothing than you’re really in trouble. Rios was actually very close to a huge game with a fly ball that I thought was a home run that came up just short and then later getting thrown out on a stolen base attempt. If those inches break your way then he is in for a monster game.
Draftkings Team
This is where people are going to either get a kick out of this or tear into me. Let me preface this by saying I had 16 entries in this contest and this was the last team I built. I was trying to be different so I used this entire team to play nothing but guys who had solid BVP numbers against their opposing Pitcher. Small sample sizes I know. I was just looking for a different angle. So please limit your hate mail all you BvP opposers.
Robbie Ross Jr. It is not a coincidence that this is 1 of only 3 teams I had on DK last night that didn’t have Strasbum on it, and it was my highest finish (5th).
Moises Sierra – Sierra was cheap and had some good BvP. I knew it was cold in Minnesota but I had no idea he was going to dress himself in 4 layers of clothing. I think that affected his swing. He still produced a little something though.
Mike Trout A modest .400 BA in 15 AB’s was enough to put him on the BvP team. His selection had more to do though with the fact that he is Mike Freaking Trout.
Hunter Pence 16 DK points isn’t bad at all. He was a guy who was nowhere on my radar until I built this team on this premise. Beckett is on the downside of his career and Pence had already had success against him in 17AB’s.
Chase Headley New Spike TV show- “When BvP goes bad”. The lead in to the first episode will be Headley. I needed a 3rd baseman in this price range and noticed that Headley was 6 for 12 against Nicasio with 2 Hr’s. I didn’t want to abandon the principals of this team and throw a guy in there with less BvP numbers but may have been higher on my list. So I rolled with Headley although I could have played Lawrie. Lawrie was same price range and higher on my 3rd baseman rankings. Let’s just say if I had made the choice of Lawrie I’d be packing my bags for the Bahamas right now. But hey, that is DFS and it’s already forgotten after I hit “enter” on this article.